09 May 2007

Milan's top Mangiagalli hospital, which has one of the most highly regarded maternity wards in Italy, has decided to replace the traditional crucifix hanging in its rooms with

an image of the Madonna as a sign of respect for the growing number of Muslim immigrant patients, reports said Wednesday. Some 30 percent of the approximately 7,000 births annually performed at the hospital are to foreign women, many of them Muslim.

"With over 2,000 women, of different ethnic and religious groups, Muslims included, who are treated at the Mangiagalli, this initiative seemed a must," Basilio Tiso, the hospital's director, told progressive daily La Repubblica.

Crucifixes traditionally hang from the walls of public buildings in mainly Catholic Italy, including in hospitals, under an 80-year-old law dating back to the country's fascist period.

"We must respect all religions and given that wards are becoming increasingly multi-